Release Date: June 16, 2017
Sweet Home, Go! is the 9th (!) studio album from Chinese leading experimental post-rock band, WANG WEN.
Written over the past three years, the album was completed early January this year under the supervision of producers Wouter and Lode Vlaminck. The new experience of working with external and European producers forged a fine balance between the creative yearning to explore new threads, contradictions and conflicts, and the producers’ desire for clarity. The resulting tracks – including an a cappella track recorded in an abandonded factory – sees WANG WEN surpassing themselves, continuing their 17- year long journey to understand themelves and the outside world through their music.
This ambitious journey has brought them tremendous success in their home country China, where the band has been selling out 1500-capacity venues across country on their recent tour.
The band comments: "Over the last few years, it feels like time had been spinning out of control. As time speeds by it makes people feel an indescribable excitement but also a feeling of suffocation. Just as we become used to the ways of today, things change in a flash. The Internet has seemingly brought people closer together, but in fact, is has plunged us into the many deep cracks of space & time."
Sweet Home, Go! follows hot on the heels of WANG WEN’s ambitious vinyl, photo book and DVD box set, entitled In Course of The Miraculous: a collaboration with Chinese cinematographer Cheng Ran, who hired the band to compose a soundtrack for a 9 (!) hour film, which involved an improvised performance of the band in an artificially flooded warehouse.
The packaging of Sweet Home, Go! is equally spectacular: 2 different inner sleeves (printed both on the inside and outside) are showing through the cutout in the outer box sleeve, printed on a special kind of fabric paper – creating a total of 4 different front cover impressions, depending on which sleeve and which side is up. An additional 30×30 cm 12-pages art book comes with the vinyl version.
This kind of attention to detail is indicative of a band that take outstanding care not only about their music, but also about the visual and haptic aspects of their art… WANG WEN profess a holistic approach to art, focused (but not solely limited) on their extraordinary music…
